Giant kelp forests are among Earth’s most productive habitats, but they are ephemeral. Researchers are using Landsat and a host of online friends to figure out where the forests are growing and declining. Read more

Field data necessary for validating ocean color satellite data are sparse in many regions of the ocean. NASA scientists will travel over much of the South Pacific between March and May 2014 to fill in this data gap. Read more

It was built to extend a four-decade record of Earth observations. One year after launch, Landsat 8 has deepened the archives and our insights — not just of the land, but of the sea and sky. Here are some of our favorite images to date. Read more

If the cold of winter is getting you down, take flight to some tropical islands. Here are a few of our favorites, as viewed from satellites and the International Space Station. We can take your mind, but you'll need your own travel agent to get your body there. Read more

A field campaign called the Iowa Flood Studies (IFloodS) is taking place in eastern Iowa from May 1 to June 15, 2013. The goal is to evaluate how well rainfall data from the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission can be used for flood forecasting. GPM is scheduled for launch in early 2014. Read more

Extreme storms such as Hurricane Sandy, Snowmageddon, and the tornadoes of 2011 have prompted questions about whether climate change is affecting the intensity of weather. Satellites, statistics, and scientific models are teaching us a lot about what we know and don't know about severe storms. Read more

A group of scientists are headed to the saltiest spot in the North Atlantic Ocean. They will spend six weeks at sea studying what's driving changes in the salt content of the ocean and how these variations relate to an acceleration of the global water cycle and climate change. Read more

In 2011, the fourth largest earthquake in history rocked the coast of Japan, spawning a devastating tsunami. Satellites and scientists had an unprecedented view of both. This gallery offers a glimpse of the broad scale of the destruction, of the recovery a year later, and of some new scientific understanding that emerged. Read more

The world is getting warmer, whatever the cause. According to an analysis by NASA scientists, the average global temperature has increased by about 0.8°Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975. Read more

Global warming is happening now, and scientists are confident that greenhouse gases are responsible. To understand what this means for humanity, it is necessary to understand what global warming is, how scientists know it's happening, and how they predict future climate. Read more

In early 2002, scientists monitoring daily satellite images of the Antarctic Peninsula watched in amazement as almost the entire Larsen B Ice Shelf splintered and collapsed in just over one month. They had never witnessed such a large area disintegrate so rapidly. Read more

For many people, El Niño and La Niña mean floods or drought, but the events are actually a warming or cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean that impacts rainfall. These sea surface temperature and rainfall anomaly images show the direct correlation between ocean temperatures and rainfall during El Niño and La Niña events. Read more

Earth would not be the planet that it is without its biosphere, the sum of its life. This series of images illustrates the variations in the average productivity of the global biosphere from 1999 to 2008. Read more

Because of differences in geography and climate, Antarctica sea ice extent is larger than the Arctic’s in winter and smaller in summer. Since 1979, Antarctica’s sea ice has increased slightly, but year-to-year fluctuations are large. Read more

Polar sea ice grows and shrinks dramatically each year, driven by seasonal cycles. Habitat for wildlife and harbinger of changing climate, sea ice offers scientists important clues about the state of our planet. Read more

Beginning in late July 2008, the remaining ice shelves along the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island underwent rapid retreat, losing a total of 214 square kilometers (83 square miles). Read more

In late February 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated, an indication of warming temperatures in the region. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites provided some of the earliest evidence of the disintegration. Read more

Few things in nature can compare to the destructive force of a hurricane. Called the greatest storm on Earth, a hurricane is capable of annihilating coastal areas with sustained winds of 155 mph or higher and intense areas of rainfall and a storm surge. In fact, during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs! Read more

Ambiguous seismic data and a spotty GPS network initially frustrated geologists mapping the length of the tsunami-generating earthquake that struck Indonesia in 2004. Caltech grad student Aron Meltzner decided to improvise: he mapped the rupture using satellite images of coral reefs and coastlines that rose or sank during the quake. Read more

Scientists' efforts to explain the paleoclimate evidence-not just the when and where of climate change, but the how and why-have produced some of the most significant theories of how the Earth's climate system works. Read more

NASA data reveal that Arctic forests are getting browner as temperatures rise. The downward trend in the forests' health may be a sign that global warming is impacting the forests sooner than scientists predicted. Read more

For six weeks every summer between 1989 and 1993, Alley and other scientists pushed columns of ice along the science assembly line, labeling and analyzing the snow for information about past climate Read more

In September 2008, after years of population declines, NOAA declared the Chesapeake Bay’s crab fishery a federal disaster (press release). This article from 2005 describes how NASA scientists used satellite observations to study how heavy rain and drought affect the amount of pollution that enters the bay. Read more

Containing fossilized microscopic plants and animals and bits of dust swept from the continents, the layers of sludge on the ocean floor provide information for scientists trying to piece together the climates of the past. Read more

Using fossilized coral reefs, Nerilie Abram constructed a 7,000-year climate history of cool/warm cycles in the Indian Ocean. In the course of her research she discovered that wildfires in Indonesia during the 1997-98 El Nino indirectly killed the Mentawai Reef. Read more

Launched in 2002, a pair of identical satellites that make up NASA's Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) are tackling the problem in an unexpected way: they are weighing Earth's fresh water from space. Serving as a sort of "divining rod" in space that moves in response to a powerful, fundamental force of nature--gravity--the satellites respond to changes in Earth's gravitation field that signal shifts in the movement of water a cross and under Earth's surface. Read more

Since the 1970s, Arctic sea ice has been melting at the rate of 9 percent per decade. NASA researcher Josefino Comiso points to an accelerating warming trend as a primary cause and discusses how global climate change may be influencing the shrinking Arctic ice cap. Read more

Space Station Science Officer Ed Lu describes what it is like to look at the
Earth over the course of an orbit. His descriptions are accompanied by
digital photographs of Earth he has taken and transmitted to the ground
during his mission.
Read more

For the first time, scientists can rely on not one, but two satellites to monitor ocean surface topography, or sea level. TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1, launched nearly 10 years apart, are now engaged in a tandem mission, creating a spaceborne ocean observatory that provides scientists, climate modelers, and forecasters with nearly global coverage of the world's ocean surface at an unprecedented level of precision. Read more

All over the globe there are relationships between the conditions of the atmosphere and oceans that affect weather and climate at great distances. The North Atlantic Oscillation is one of these teleconnections, linking the temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean with winter weather in North America and Europe. Read more

While NASA climate scientists were reviewing radiation data emanating from the tropics simply to test existing notions, they uncovered a phenomenon no one expected. They found that progressively more thermal radiation has been escaping the atmosphere above the tropics and progressively less sunlight has been reflecting off of the clouds. Read more

Konrad Steffen arrived on the Greenland Ice Sheet for the 2002 fieldwork season and immediately observed that something significant was happening in the Arctic. Pools of water already spotted the ice sur
face, and melting was occurring where it never had before. Read more

Researchers have discovered that scatterometer data could provide important information on a variety of other surfaces, such as forests and ice, which became the basis for global climate change study applications. Read more

When fish began dying in droves off the coast of Oman, local media reported it was due to contaminated ballast water from a U.S. tanker while authorities feared that a toxic algal bloom was to blame. Neither was true. Using data from NASA's Terra and SeaWinds missions, a team of scientists demonstrated the fish kill was due to a series of natural environmental changes.
Read more

Although red tides have been reported in Florida since 1530, scientists are still struggling to understand their cause, to predict their occurrence, and to find a way to lessen their impact. Now, a group of scientists in Florida is using remote sensing data and offshore monitoring to find and track harmful algal blooms as they form and spread.
Read more

Stratospheric ozone depletion due to human activities has resulted in an increase of ultraviolet radiation on the Earth's surface. The article describes some effects on human health, aquatic ecosystems, agricultural plants and other living things, and explains how much ultraviolet radiation we are currently getting and how we measure it.
Read more

Over the past several decades, scientists have uncovered a number of El Nino-like climate anomalies across the globe. One of the most recent to be discovered takes place in the Indo-Pacific warm pool. This body of water, which spans the western waters of the equatorial Pacific to the eastern Indian Ocean, holds the warmest seawaters in the world. Over a period of roughly two decades, the warm pool's average annual temperatures increase and then decrease like a beacon. These oscillations may affect the climate in regions as far away as the southern United States and may be powerful enough to broaden the extent of El Nino. Read more

Scientists have sought a greater understanding of the hurricane intensification process to improve forecasting techniques and decrease the radius of coastal evacuations. A new study using CAMEX-3 hurricane data reveals the role of "hot towers" in increasing a storm's fury. Read more

John Martin devoted his career to understanding the basic chemical processes that govern life in the ocean. His famous ‘iron hypothesis’ not only changed the way in which scientists view the ocean, but also introduced a controversial method for lowering carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Read more

Though scientists have been studying atolls at least since the mid-1800s, many mysteries remain about exactly how they form and what factors determine their shape. Using satellite imagery collected by Landsat 7, scientists are attempting to discern if monsoons played a role in shaping the Maldives. Read more

Experts predict a period of elevated storm activity during the next 15 years. However, data from the SeaWinds instrument aboard NASA's QuikSCAT satellite could allow researchers to detect potential hurricanes up to two days earlier than with traditional forecasting methods. Read more

Coral reefs represent some of the densest and most varied ecosystems on Earth. Over the past 50 years the health of these reefs have been declining. Using high-resolution satellite imagery, scientists are locating the reefs that are in the most trouble. Read more

Many processes that shape the Earth's landscape happen too slowly to be witnessed in a human lifetime. But analysis of satellite imagery shows that the large glacier tongue of the Ninnis Glacier on the coast of East Antarctica has disintegrated, changing the shape of the coastline almost overnight. Read more

Scientists are using sea surface height data collected by satellites to monitor eddies (vortices of water) in the Gulf of Alaska. These eddies are important because they carry nutrients from coastal waters into the open ocean, thereby nourishing the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) that form the base of the ocean food chain. Read more

Scientists have developed a new method to measure rainfall in the open ocean with underwater microphones. By measuring rainfall over the oceans the scientists will be able to improve global climate models. Read more

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), is the first mission dedicated to measuring tropical and subtropical rainfall through microwave and visible infrared sensors, and includes the first spaceborne rain radar. Read more

The phenomenon known as El Niño is sometimes reverses, leading to strong trade winds, colder than normal water off the coast of Peru, and warmer than normal water near Australia. This cold counterpart to El Niño is known as La Niña. Read more

During the summers of 1997 and 1998, a type of one-celled microscopic plant changed the color of the Bering Sea from its natural deep blue to a shimmering aquamarine. These plants, called coccolithophores, present a unique problem for researchers because a massive bloom of the organisms has never before been observed in the Bering Sea. Read more

On December 18, 1999, NASA launched a new flagship, the Terra satellite, to begin collecting a new 18-year global data set on which to base future scientific investigations about our complex home planet. Read more